Page 75 of Outbreak Protocol
“Stability isn’t a place, Felix,” he replies, his voice steady. “It’s us. You and me. The three of us are her home. That’s the only thing that’s been stable for her, and it won’t change whether we’re here or in Canada.”
He stops and turns to face me. “And you’re wrong about Germany. We’re not running away from it.” He takes my hand, his grip firm. “How do we best honour those people? The ones who didn’t make it? By staying here, standing guard over ashes? Or by building the future they died for?”
He looks me straight in the eye, and I see he’s not just making a logical argument; he’s reaching for the same memory that haunts me. “Thomas Hartmann didn’t volunteer to stay behind in a dying city so we could feel guilty. He stayed because we gave him hope. He stayed so his family, and families like his, could live. He chose that so we could do this work. This institute in Canada…thatis how we honour him. By making sure his choice mattered for everyone. By making sure we never need a Thomas Hartmann again.”
His words hit me with the force of a physical blow, realigning everything. I look up from his earnest face to the vast, star-dusted sky, and I think of that book of constellations I read to Emma in that cold room in Munich. I think of that young soldier’s voice on the recording, his last desperate plea:Tell them we mattered.
Erik is right. Staying here isn’t remembrance; it’s stagnation. Moving forward, building something from this terrible knowledge, is the only true way to remember. It’s the only way to make any of it matter.
"Okay," I say, the single word feeling heavier and more freeing than any I have ever spoken. "Okay. Canada."
A slow smile breaks through the exhaustion on Erik’s face, the one that still makes my heart ache. He pulls me close, and his kiss under the Alpine stars is a promise. In that moment,we’re not the guardians of a terrible knowledge, but the architects of a new one.
Later that night, I stand in the doorway of Emma’s room, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest. The handsome German flag hangs on her wall, the black, red, and gold a stark slash of colour against the pale paint. Before, it was a memorial to what we’d lost. Now, I see it differently. It is our anchor. It is our a reason. It is the memory we will carry forward, not as a burden of grief, but as a foundation of purpose.
I make a silent promise to the sleeping child, and to the ghosts of a nation. We will remember. We will rebuild.
Not just for Germany. For Anna. For Thomas. For all of them.
For Emma, who deserves a world better than the one we nearly destroyed.
For the future, which remains possible, and which we will now go and build.